A Companion to the Anthropology of Europe

By Ullrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic Craith and Jonas Frykman

A Companion to the Anthropology of Europe offers a survey of contemporary Europeanist anthropology and European ethnology, and a guide to emerging trends in this geographical field of research. Providing a synthesis of the different traditions and contemporary approaches, the book is both thematic and fully cross-European in its approach.

• Provides an authoritative guide for researchers, instructors and students of anthropology and European studies
• Discusses important emerging trends in this broadening field of research
• Includes established names and rising stars who will shape the discipline in years to come

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Mar 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781444362169

Book preview

Introduction: The Frontiers of Europe and European Ethnology

Ullrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic Craith, and Jonas Frykman

This Companion to the Anthropology of Europe offers a survey of contemporary Europeanist anthropology and European ethnology, and a guide to emerging trends in this geographical field of research. Given the diversity of approaches within Europe to the anthropological study of Europe, the book is intended to provide a synthesis of the different traditions and contemporary approaches. Earlier surveys – whether in German (e.g. Dracklé and Kokot 1996), French (e.g. Jeggle and Chiva 1992), or English (e.g. Macdonald 1993; Goddard et al. 1996) – have approached the subject through regional ethnographic case studies, mostly concentrating on Western Europe, or focusing on specific aspects, such as European integration (e.g. Bellier and Wilson 2000); the present volume is different in that its approach is both thematic and fully cross-European.

Any reader picking up this book may well do so on the assumption that the terms that frame it, Europe and anthropology, are reasonably straightforward and that their meaning is more or less clear. This must surely be why such a volume has been produced: to summarize and reflect on the engagement of an agreed discipline with its (more or less) self-evident subject matter. As editors, we have approached this project in a different spirit, considering that neither anthropology (or its cousin, European ethnology) nor Europe are intellectual terrae firmae – historically and conceptually, both can be described as moving targets: in a constant process of transformation since their first inception – and perhaps, as some would argue, so elusive that it is doubtful whether they have any reality at all outside the imagination.

The idea that Europe may be elusive or indeed nonexistent might strike the unsuspecting reader as rather strange. Are the origins of Europe not located in Greek mythology (Tsoukalas 2002)? Is this not the Continent that lays claim to having been the cradle of (at least Western) civilization? From where the major global empires were built and administered, and where two world wars originated? And are we not witnessing, in our own lifetime, the coming together of diverse European nations to build a peaceful European Union (EU), aspiring to be a major global economic power? Is not this list of stereotypes, for all its brevity, full of questionable assumptions?

Anthropologists have looked critically at these and other themes for some time, and have even engaged in debates about them with other disciplines. Europe as a sociocultural construct has increasingly come under the magnifying glass and one cannot help the impression that the keener the gaze, the deeper the subject recedes into a haze. Part of the problem with the definition of – the drawing of boundaries around – Europe is that its frontiers to the south and east are rather fuzzy. Is Russia part of Europe, or where does Europe’s eastern boundary run? Both Turkey and Israel regularly compete in the Eurovision Song Contest, as do various former Soviet Republics whose geographical Europeanness depends rather on where one draws an arbitrary line on the map and whose cultural Europeanness is every bit as debatable, from the hegemonic point of view, as that of Turkey, nevertheless a long time candidate for membership of the EU. Turkey is also a long-standing member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which has been an important component of Europe’s defenses. But are matters any clearer in the north and west? And what about those who argue that geographically Europe is not a continent at all but merely a component in a landmass more accurately named as Eurasia? (See Hann, Chapter 6 in this volume.)

For most of the latter half of the twentieth century, Europe was usually conflated with Western Europe, while Eastern Europe was at best considered a debatable land. With the decline of Communism we have witnessed the fragmentation of Eastern Europe, and that concept has become increasingly fuzzy. It now appears that there could be a threefold division between East Central Europe, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe proper (i.e. Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia; see Burgess 1997:23).

It has always been problematic to delineate the spatial boundaries of Europe precisely, perhaps because Europe is more a conceptual than a geographical entity. Even before the emergence of Benedict Anderson’s (1983) notion of imagined community, it had become customary to think about Europe in terms of an imagined space (Said 1978), and ideas of Europe have varied considerably between different geographical locations (Malmborg and Stråth 2002; Nic Craith 2006).

And yet, in much of western and northern Europe, Europe is considered to be somewhere else. Looking over one of their cultural shoulders, Russians have always perceived Europe as on their doorstep, while the German and French perspective on Europe has been tempered by centuries of bloody conflict – for them Europe could be just about anywhere they could live peacefully alongside one another (Kockel 2003:53). From the traditional Danish perspective, Europe was located between their southern border and the Dolomites, and Danes crossing the German border are going to Europe, as do English people crossing the Channel. Irish people used to snigger at this as a typically English idiosyncrasy until they discovered, following the IMF bailout in 2010, that they never belonged to Europe either. And even the center of the Continent is hard to locate.

A large number of places, as far apart as the German Rhineland and the Lithuanian-Belarusian frontier, are laying claim to the honor, and definitions of Central Europe range from the German-speaking former Prussian and Habsburg lands to a group of contemporary states that do not even include any of the latter. Part of that particular discrepancy lies, of course, in the way language prevalence is defined – whether it is measured according to the official language of state administration or the language spoken by the majority of the population in their everyday lives.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the concept of Europe has frequently become confused with that of the EU, and the term Europe is often used as shorthand when journalists make references to EU administrative and political decision-making bodies (Phillipson 2003:29). Yet the two are not coterminous. Many states, such as Switzerland and Norway, form part of historical, geographical Europe but have no representation in the European parliament.

All of this makes interesting study for anthropologists and others concerned with aspects of culture, history, and society, and so the vagueness of Europe as a concept and cultural actuality can be intriguing and inspiring rather than being an obstacle to rigorous research. However, for a book such as this, vagueness of its subject matter constitutes a certain quandary – which regions to include or exclude, whether to focus on the common perception that equates Europe and the EU, and so on. It is important to recognize that Europe is not a fixed entity, and as an analytical category it remains in historical flux.

Similarly, the discipline of anthropology, perhaps marginally more so than other fields, remains in flux. A generation ago, it was claimed (Kosuth 1991) that anthropologists were not suited to the scientific study of their own society – at a time when anthropologists were increasingly getting ready to come home from colonial and otherwise exotic outposts and do just that. The anthropology of Europe has, nevertheless, remained very much in the shadow of a more proper anthropology elsewhere, as Nigel Rapport (2002:4) put it with reference to the anthropology of Britain. Most European regions have at some stage developed the study of their own culture, usually in association with the respective project of nation-building. Regional and national differences have led to a proliferation of labels for these approaches, and while the designation European ethnology has been extensively used since it was proposed by Sigurd Erixson in the 1930s, practice in this field remains firmly focused on the local and regional, with quite limited references to any wider Europe of sorts. In one sense, this is a good thing because its acute awareness of the Local is a key strength of European ethnology; in another sense, the lack of a decidedly European perspective has made the designation a bit of a misnomer that causes confusion outside the immediate field (and often enough within it). Many of the departments and institutes of European ethnology have since the 1970s aligned themselves thematically, theoretically, and methodologically with cultural anthropology. Many of the authors in this volume would be Grenzgänger, scholars who cross the boundaries between an anthropology proper and those other approaches gathered under the label of European ethnology.

Rather than providing a simple, straightforward answer to the question of how Europe should be delineated for the purpose of this book, we have chosen a somewhat shamanic approach, beginning this exploration of the anthropology of Europe with journeys toward Europe’s cardinal directions. The chapters in the first section seek to locate Europe with reference to its various – real or imagined – geographical frontiers. Christian Giordano reviews the original regional field of Europeanist anthropology from a perspective encompassing the Mediterranean region as a whole, identifying current issues and future research directions. He highlights the fluidity of Europe’s borders by exploring the idea of the Mediterranean space as historical region which spans over three continents. This critiques some Eurocentric visions concerning both the external and internal boundaries of Europe. In a contribution on circumpolar anthropology, Hugh Beach addresses social science issues and deals with indigenous peoples and their relations to the environment.

Reginald Byron looks westward across the Atlantic, contrasting American and European perspectives. He argues against neat tidy categories such as multiculturalism, which are useful for the purposes of control but which can result in cultural boundaries that are unhelpful for society at large. Major issues and controversies relating to the transformations in the ethnoanthropological study of Eastern Europe since 1989 are discussed by Michał Buchowski, who explores disciplinary boundaries in the work of scholars in postsocialist Europe. This contribution reviews the achievements of academics in the fields of ethnology and anthropology with a view to bridging the gap between one group and the other and breaking down an inappropriate hierarchical division in favor of more egalitarian area studies. Chris Hann also attempts to break down geographical and conceptual boundaries. Traveling further east, he ponders the boundaries of geographical Europe as well as its cultures and society. He considers the case for a wider geocultural perspective in the context of debates about the Eurocentric nature of much of anthropology.

The concept of Mitteleuropa or Central Europe has proved fascinating for scholars in many disciplines (for example: Ash 1989, Bauman 1989, Kundera 1984, Miłosz 1989, Schöpflin 1989, Schwarz 1989). In the final contribution in this section, Gabriela Kiliánová compares and contrasts the polycentric discipline of European ethnology with social/cultural anthropological approaches originating from or studying Central Europe. She concludes that contemporary ethnology in Central Europe finds itself on the frontiers between the historical and social disciplines. Although ethnologists in Central Europe draw on different methodological approaches, they remain strongly orientated toward cultural anthropology and the social sciences.

Following this conceptual triangulation of an anthropology and ethnology of Europe, the remainder of the volume is organized according to thematic rather than regional foci. Because the political project of European integration continues to attract a relatively large amount of anthropological research on Europe, we begin with a thematic section reviewing key aspects of EU policy, practice, and everyday lived experience. Lisanne Wilken opens the section, considering how a specific European identity is being constructed by European, national, regional, and local agencies. She explores three different anthropological approaches to questions of culture and identity in relation to EU integration and suggests that all three contribute to our understanding of the idea of European integration and its implications for identity construction.

Since borders are a major issue for European integration, this aspect is addressed by several of the contributors. Ksenija Vidmar Horvat examines how consumer culture affects processes of European integration especially since the EU enlargements in 2004 and 2007. Locating her enquiry in postsocialist regions, she asks how we will envison a post–Cold War, post-Western and post-national Europe. She believes that the postsocialist experience has central relevance for any understanding of Europe and argues that the problem of Eurocentrism will not be dismantled until the collective perceptions of Europe in postsocialist countries are fully appreciated.

The concept of a Europe of the Regions, from the perspective of the lived experience of internal and external border regions in particular, is discussed by Thomas M. Wilson. Pointing to the significance of these border regions for the European Commission itself, as well as for national and subnational governments, he argues that a regional Europe is thriving both in the cores and peripheries of every country on the European continent. Catherine Neveu and Elena Filippova reflect on issues of mobility and security in the context of the Schengen acquis and the question of a European citizenship. Drawing on their own research in France and Russia, these contributors focus on the need to distinguish between different conceptions of citizenship across the continent and in particular of its specific connections with issues of (national) identities.

Turning a spotlight on what may well be the geographical center of Europe but is currently the Eastern frontier of the EU, Justyna Straczuk discusses issues at the interface of identity and policy. Suggesting that the new eastern border of the EU may well be a very strong symbolic sign of a divided Europe, Straczuk examines the implications of a sealed political border in a particular region which traditionally enjoyed an open borderland mentality. The chapter explores the contradictions and full implications of a political border which orientalizes and excludes near neighbors while promoting the idea of a unified Europe which can appear very illusory. Marion Demossier concludes this section with a discussion of how EU policies are experienced, negotiated, and sometimes subverted at the grass roots level. This chapter highlights the contribution that anthropology can make to an understanding of social and cultural processes in Europe and argues for anthropological expertise at the core of debates on the relationship between culture and politics in the EU.

In years to come, readers might expect to find in this part of the book a discussion of anthropological perspectives on the Eurozone crisis. That crisis escalated at a time when this volume was almost ready (these lines are written as the cancellation of the Greek referendum on the latest EU bailout of the Greek economy is being announced on the radio), and so has become one of the inevitable lacunae that occur when events overtake analysis and publication schedules; a subsequent edition may well take up this topic, perhaps in the context of a broader evaluation of the cultural foundations of European social economy and its post-Capitalist transformations.

Culture and identity have always been difficult issues for the EU and the concept of EU cultural identity usually refers to the sum total of national icons and identities. The Preamble to the Charter of Fundamental Rights (European Convention 2003:75) suggests that the Union contributes to the preservation and to the development of these common values while respecting the diversity of the cultures and traditions of the peoples of Europe as well as the national identities of the Member States. Inevitably, there are difficulties associated with this process. Cultural elements such as memory, shared heritage, and history, which unify identities at the national level tend to divide them at European level (Shore 2000:18). The overarching principle of unity in diversity has proved very difficult to carry through. Diversity is a wild and chameleonic animal with thousands of heads that can hardly be kept imprisoned in the case of one legal principle (Toggenburg 2004:18). The motto unity in diversity could be construed in many different ways. Obviously, it could be regarded as an acknowledgment and affirmation of the diverse range of European (national) identities and cultures, as well as including the various regional and minority cultures. However, it could also be viewed as an appropriation of power and symbolism to the center – as if Europe’s ‘mosaic of cultures’ was but a multiplicity of smaller units in a greater European design. From that viewpoint, European culture is characterized as the over-arching, encapsulating and transcendent composite of national cultures; a whole greater than the sum of its discordant parts (Shore 2000:54).

Chapters in the third section of this volume focus on whether there is such a thing as a single European heritage or collective identity. Sharon Macdonald, looking at how Europeans have been dealing with their past, both publicly and privately, introduces the concept of past presencing to avoid the problematic categorization of history versus memory. Taking the breakup of Yugoslavia as a case study, Maja Povrzanovi x107_Galliard-Roman_10n_000100 Frykman considers aspects of conflict and recovery on the continent. She argues for the importance of fieldwork as a basis for an anthropology of state-building that can draw on the anthropology of transition, the anthropology of state, and the anthropology of violence and recovery. Peter Jan Margry reviews the significance of belief systems in Europe, past and present, with particular reference to popular religion today. Significantly, he explores the relationship between changes in the history of Europe and the way in which individual and collective developments have been inspired by Europe’s (Christian) past. Continuing with the theme of religion and its political aspects, Gabriele Marranci reviews the study of Muslims in Europe and the challenges that anthropologists face in engaging with such issues, not least of which are questions of definition, especially how one defines Muslims in Europe. With this, Marranci is highlighting a critical aspect of European ethnic ascription. Challenging conventional definitions of European, Sabrina Kopf takes up the theme of othering in her study of Roma and Sinti, who represent the largest ethnic minority within the EU, with an estimated population of 10–12 million. Finally, Norbert Fischer examines if and how a specific European sense of place may be founded in visions of landscape. People have always invested landscapes with meaning and the idea of a European perspective on landscape is not necessarily new. However, the definition of the concept of landscape has changed and there is greater recognition of its dynamic and fluid nature as well as its significance for understanding people and society.

Identity and heritage are inextricably linked to cultural practice, but not all such practice is explicitly aimed at establishing identity and defining heritage. In the fourth section, contributors offer ethnoanthropological perspectives on key aspects of cultural practice in European everyday life. Orvar Löfgren deals with tourism as a specific form of mobility and its potential contribution to European integration from below. Exploring the institutionalization of travel and the routines of holiday making, Löfgren examines the ways in which the tourist Europeanizes Europe. This exploration is not confined to the continent itself but also to the way European models of tourism have been exported to other regions of the globe.

In a contribution that takes up threads from the second and third sections, Gisela Welz discusses aspects of diversity, regulation, and heritage production in relation to European food cultures. Since European Union policies impact directly on food products and on the process of production, it follows that that European consumption habits are strongly shaped by such policies. Welz introduces the concept of foodscape and explores the impact of sometimes contradictory EU policies on what we eat and drink at the beginning of the new century.

Different cultural perspectives and traditions are an ongoing issue for the EU, and one of its most difficult challenges is the management of the range of languages and dialects spoken on the Continent. The changing role of languages in the context of intercultural identity politics and the challenges that this diversity poses for Europe are assessed in a contribution by Máiréad Nic Craith. The treatment of cultural rights by various agencies is a difficult issue, and one of direct relevance for states that query the right of women to wear a burqa or the right, for example, of Somali migrants to circumcise their female children according to traditional customs. Valdimar Hafstein and Martin Skrydstrup explore different ways of telling stories of cultural rights and the different appeals to tradition or human dignity which can be used to support such claims. Christina Garsten compares and contrasts different approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR), assessing their relevance for contemporary Europe. Arguing that CSR is a concept which impacts on larger issues such as globalization, Garsten proposes that it has relevance for the relativity or universality of human rights and values. David Murphy takes us into the dark heart of Europe with his examination of the Far Right music scene as an aspect of cultural identity. Murphy’s argument is that in some instances music scenes have offered an alternative avenue of belonging for young people who are not particularly interested in ideals of nationalism. Finally in this section, Christiane Schwab takes a critical look at urban life through an anthropological lens. In 2005, more than half of the world’s population lived in urban environments, and this proportion is on the increase. Schwab’s contribution explores relationships between anthropologists and cities and the theoretical and methodological responses to urban issues.

The fifth and final section deals with areas where disciplinary boundaries are explicitly and deliberately being crossed. This may seem a strange notion, given our earlier pointer toward the blurred disciplinary boundaries of anthropology. It may be said with some justification that many anthropologists are less concerned with the maintenance of canonical disciplinary purity than some of their academic peers in disciplinary ivory towers, and that this willingness to engage is perhaps a result of the anthropologists’ greater experience of cross-cultural perspectives. There is, of course, also the four fields view of anthropology – physical, cultural (or ethnological), linguistics, and archaeology – especially in the US-American tradition, which in itself constitutes a multiple boundary-crossing.

The chapters in this section raise issues in interdisciplinary developments with reference to key areas of cross-disciplinary collaboration, beginning with Maryon McDonald’s discussion of the role of anthropology in relation to medicine and science, both as a contributor to and a critical perspective on these disciplines, which to some extent connects with that four fields tradition. Elisenda Ardévol and Aldofo Estalella examine the growing uses of the Internet in ethnographic research. They draw an important distinction between the Internet as a tool of research versus the Internet as an object of study, which illustrates the complexities of conceptions of the Internet for anthropological research and the challenges and opportunities it poses for fieldwork.

The rise of interactive media and its implications for ethnography is explored by Terence Wright from the perspective of visual culture. Traditionally, the relationship between anthropology and the visual arts has not been easy, but in highlighting the significance of the visual in contemporary culture, Wright emphasizes the pertinence of visual culture and visual representations of culture for anthropologists. Elka Tschernokoshewa reviews theoretical and practical implications of the increasing realization that cultural worlds are hybrid rather than pure. Citing Ina-Maria Greverus (2002:26), she suggests that anthropologists themselves are becoming more and more hybrid. The hermeneutic value of creative writing for anthropological inquiry is evaluated by Helena Wulff with reference to an Irish case study. Engaging with texts is not a new practice for anthropologists. In 1973, Clifford Geertz proposed the notion of culture as text. He suggested that the culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong (Geertz 1977[1973]:452). He compared the process of doing ethnography with trying to read (in the sense of ‘construct a reading of’) a manuscript. Wulff notes that anthropologists have become more reflexive regarding their own writing, and she raises the provocative question: Can writing be taught?

Ullrich Kockel concludes this section with an ethnoecological meditation on issues of place and displacement, opening up critical viewpoints for an ethnotopology that has to grapple with the contentious politics of belonging.

In the concluding essay to this companion, Jonas Frykman takes stock of European ethnology and the anthropology of Europe at this historical juncture, and locates European ethnology in the wider field of anthropology, especially the anthropology of Europe, at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

It is inevitable with a project of this scope that one has to be selective with regard to issues and aspects to be included. There are gaps in the coverage of regions and themes. Moreover, some of the topics we had originally hoped to cover in the volume could not be included for various reasons. A different editorial team may well have chosen a different set of foci and approached the treatment of the overall theme differently. In the context of a discipline and subject matter in considerable flux, that can only be a good thing, engendering debate and further development of the field. With this in mind, we invited contributions to this volume from both well-established scholars and emerging researchers, who are, after all, the future of the discipline, and who will be shaping the agenda for such debate and development. Although this is a European volume, we did not confine ourselves to scholars located on that continent, but aimed instead to present a list of contributors who are experts in Europeanist anthropology/ethnology – regardless of their location. Moreover, we have encouraged contributors not to confine themselves to English-language material and resources, instead taking a broad perspective which would embrace the multilingual nature of the European experience. Our aim with this collection has been to be comprehensive, but not exhaustive, explorative but not definitive. In due course, we hope to complement this volume with a reader that will cover some of the topics that could not be included here and provide further food for thought on those that could.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the contributors for making this volume possible. As well as providing a synthesis of current scholarship and scholarly debates, each of them was invited to present his or her own research. All contributions were subject to peer review, and we are grateful to the many colleagues from different traditions of Europeanist anthropology and European ethnology who engaged with that vital review process. Our institutions, the University of Ulster and the University of Lund, supported this project in various ways. Last but by no means least, we are grateful to the editorial staff at Wiley-Blackwell, especially to Rosalie Roberston for commissioning and enthusiastically supporting the project, Julia Kirk who patiently coordinated the whole process, and Annabelle Mundy and Alec McAulay who dealt with copy-editing issues during the final, hectic months.

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PART I

Europe’s Cardinal Directions

CHAPTER 2

The Anthropology of Mediterranean Societies

Christian Giordano

THE DISCOVERY OF MEDITERRANEAN SOCIETIES AS AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL SUBJECT

In comparison with other more distant and hard-to-reach geographical areas, anthropologists discovered Mediterranean societies, especially the Mediterranean societies of continental Europe, as a subject of study, fairly recently.¹ This is not fortuitous, but neither can it be traced back to negligible and superficial reasons, as some critics would have it (Moreno Navarro 1972; Gilmore 1979:38). Any claim that it was the mild climate, the pleasant company of easy-going, amusing, and generous contacts or, worse still, the proverbial fine dining, that drove northern-European anthropologists (British and Dutch especially, but also French) to choose the Mediterranean as a locus amoenus for their researches, would be tendentious. In fact, if this hypothesis were true, we would then need to wonder why these societies were not studied sooner. But, as John Cole pointed out, the rationale behind this choice is far less banal and conceals political reasons (Cole 1979).

Aside from the groundbreaking and isolated research carried out by Charlotte Gower-Chapman in the small Sicilian agro-town of Milocca at the end of the 1920s, but discovered only in the 1970s (Gower-Chapman 1971), the anthropology of Mediterranean societies, according to authoritative opinions, made its first appearance in 1954 with the publication of Julian Pitt-Rivers’ monograph The People of the Sierra (Boissevain 1979:81). Along with this study of an Andalusian rural community, we also need to mention A Turkish Village by Paul Stirling (Stirling 1965) and Honour, Family and Patronage by John Campbell (Campbell 1974) centered on the Sarakatsani community in Epirus (northwestern Greece).

All of these field researches in the Mediterranean area were carried out in the late 1940s and the 1950s – that is during a period of great transformations and upheavals in extra-European countries. In fact, colonial empires – those territories where anthropologists, especially British, French, and Dutch ones, had carried out their researches, were disintegrating. India and Indonesia by then had attained independence, while many future new nations in Africa and Asia were slowly breaking away from colonial dominion and were on the brink of independence. It is a well-known fact that decolonization processes were marked by tensions and conflicts. This epoch was characterized by nonviolent protests (as in India), nativist revolts (e.g. Mau Mau in Kenya) guerrilla warfare (e.g. Indonesia), and full-blown wars (e.g. French Indochina), all followed by the colonial powers’ brutal repressions. In this world in turmoil, anthropological field research became increasingly problematic, if not impossible; difficulties were made greater because anthropologists were no longer under the umbrella of the colonial order, with whom most of them had at least collaborated. Without this protection, finding a place to study the allegedly untouched traditions of savage societies, as they had been termed by Bronisław Małinowski and Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, was a nearly unthinkable endeavor in such an endemically unstable situation. Moreover, in countries that had attained independence, anthropologists were increasingly viewed with disfavor and were often considered personae non gratae, since they were suspected of being agents of the former colonial power.

In all likelihood, these specific political circumstances, occurring precisely in the years just mentioned, played a major role in the rise and development of the anthropology of Mediterranean societies. At first, however, researchers did not change their methodological paradigm. Indeed, we can trace several continuities between what we shall call colonial anthropology and the newborn anthropological research in the Mediterranean region. In the first place, Pitt-Rivers, Stirling, and Campbell chose extremely peripheral and highly isolated locations for their field researches. Thus, there is a clear correspondence between field choices in colonial anthropology and in Mediterranean societies. Moreover, we cannot fail to notice a more or less overt equivalence between African, Asian, and American primitives on the one hand and southern European shepherds and peasants on the other. In itself, this would be sufficient proof of the link between the earliest anthropologists of Mediterranean societies and the classic researches of colonial anthropology. Yet, there is also another interesting correspondence in the nearly identical use of monographs made by Pitt-Rivers, Stirling, and Campbell, as well as other researchers who followed in these three authors’ footsteps. In this first phase of studies on Mediterranean societies, the monographic study of a village, located in the most out-of-the-way area possible, was still seen as the sole legitimate standard for serious anthropological research.

The monograph approach, based on studies of a single and generally marginal rural community (and thus one that could be regarded as a virtuous example of an authenticity still untouched by modernity’s influence) was soon subject to criticism. Even so, this approach remained prevalent up to the 1980s, notwithstanding due exceptions such as the pioneering multisided research by Caroline White (White 1980) who studied two neighboring but historically different townships in the Fucino basin in Abruzzi (south-central Italy). This more or less explicit connection with the methodology developed by colonial anthropology and its field research was pointed out by Jeremy Boissevain in particular. Boissevain questioned whether persisting with the study of Mediterranean societies, and European societies in general, by means of monographic researches could still be appropriate, since these were based on the assumption that the communities examined were actually isolated, thus as truly autonomous as they appeared to be (Boissevain 1975, 1979). Boissevain’s criticism, which exposes the tribalization of Mediterranean societies (and of European societies in general), presents two fundamental arguments. In the first place, the choice of field investigation sites located in areas known for their socioeconomic marginality highlights how anthropologists at the time sought out societies in the Mediterranean area, especially the European one, that were as akin as possible to the segmentary ones of the primitives that had been studied overseas during the colonial epoch. Second, any monograph research centered almost exclusively on the social life occurring within a purported community microcosm tends to overlook the significance of the historical dimension, and thus also to underestimate phenomena such as the presence and incorporating role of the state, the more or less enforced processes of bureaucratization and national integration, the dynamics of urbanization and finally, the power relationships and class conflicts between those within the little community and those outside (Boissevain 1975:11). Accordingly, the condition of subservience, and thus the structural asymmetries in relation to the hegemonic outer world, is hardly examined. Identifying ways to surpass the tribalistic and intrinsically ahistorical viewpoint inherent in village monographs, a crucial goal for the anthropology of Mediterranean societies, was precisely the most noteworthy contribution of the volume Beyond the Community: Social Process in Europe, edited by Jeremy Boissevain and John Friedl (Boissevain and Friedl 1975).

In fact, from the mid-1970s up to the great crisis of the anthropology of Mediterranean societies in the second half of the 1980s, monographs were still published, but their nature underwent a significant change, since they became less generalistic and impressionistic. There was no longer that eagerness to describe and interpret the entire social life of a little community as if withdrawn into itself. The subjects and the questions involved, as the titles of the publications indicate, became increasingly specific and targeted. Moreover, history as a long-term process and not as a historicist vision, that is, a pedantic event-based sequence, began to emerge in the narration’s background. Amongst the various studies, those by Anton Blok, The Mafia of a Sicilian Village: 1860–1960 (Blok 1974), Jane and Peter Schneider, Culture and Political Economy in Western Sicily (Schneider and Schneider 1976), David Gilmore, People in the Plain (Gilmore 1980) and Caroline White, Patron and Partisans (White 1980), notwithstanding their different theoretic approaches, are probably the most representative of this initial shift, not least because their new methodological approach was explicitly thematized in their books’ introductions.

Finally, we need to add that essays such as those by John Davis (1977) and David Gilmore (1982) began to appear in print during this highly fruitful phase of the anthropology of Mediterranean societies. Thanks to a professedly more to-the-point approach, thus greeted with keen interest for comparisons, these essays went beyond both the narrow scope of monograph studies and the apparently comparative, yet ultimately rather fragmentary, character of some miscellaneous texts on specific themes such as honor and patronage (Peristiany 1965; Gellner and Waterbury 1977), which will be examined later. In fact, Davis’s main concern seems to be this disregard for, and unwillingness to undertake, comparison, as he underscores right from the introduction of his book:

the reader may think he is in a luxuriant field, but gradually sees there is no controversy; he may think he is in the company of scientists, but find they do not compare their results. It is a constant theme of this book that Mediterraneanists have failed in their plain duty to be comparative and to produce even the most tentative proposition concerning concomitant variations, and so it need not to be elaborated here: one example will suffice.

(Davis 1977:5)

Admittedly, though Davis’s appeal did not go unheeded, it would be followed only by some and those, moreover, much later (Giordano 1992). Christian Bromberger also pointed up these misgivings about comparisons in his closing remarks to the volume of the conference proceedings in Aix-en-Provence in 2001. Bromberger, going back to Davis’s remarks, confirmed that they were still pertinent and could very well apply to the new miscellany work (Bromberger and Durand 2001:740). Maybe we ought to wonder whether other regional anthropologies, such as those of societies in Southeast Europe or Southeast Asia, are just as unheeding of comparison.

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF MEDITERRANEAN SOCIETIES: MAJOR THEMES

The anthropology of Mediterranean societies is characterized by a remarkable variety of themes, as the previously mentioned studies by Davis and Gilmore also show (Davis 1977; Gilmore 1982). However, we can identify some topics that were particularly debated in the past and which, beyond the circumscribed Mediterranean area, have lost none of their relevance. Under this aspect, we shall consider three main themes:

honor, status, and gender relationships;

patronage and political practices;

history and the past in the present.

Honor, Status, and Gender Relationships

It is widely known that in anthropology the theme of honor in Mediterranean societies was propagated by two authors in particular: John G. Peristiany (Peristiany 1965; Peristiany and Pitt-Rivers 1992) and Julian Pitt-Rivers (Pitt-Rivers 1968, 1977; Peristiany and Pitt-Rivers 1992). However, before, and contemporaneous with, these two anthropologists Mediterranean honor had been a very popular subject amongst leading literary and cinematography figures, and, due to some aspects linked to criminal law, jurisprudence, and criminology experts, too. We need to add, though, that all of the above have to do with works of art or strictly juridical, thus normative, reasoning, the concern of which is not discovering ways to delineate and identify the various facets of honor.

With reference to Mediterranean societies, Pitt-Rivers was the first to attempt a structured and thorough characterization that would encompass the various dimensions of honor.

Paraphrasing Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse, Pitt-Rivers begins by distinguishing between two key aspects of honor, the inner and the outer:

Honor can be understood as a feeling or, more precisely, as a specific state of consciousness. This consists of a conviction that there is nothing one should reproach oneself for, and that consequently one can claim, and indeed has, a right to pride (Pitt-Rivers 1968:503, 1977:1). This point of view considers the individual aspect only, since the sole judge of one’s own honor is the individual – that is, oneself.

The second aspect refers to concrete behavior as a manifestation of this state of mind. This state, therefore, is exclusively relevant if courses of action are regarded in relation to their reception and their appraisal by the society to which the actor belongs. Consequently, honor is strictly linked to what may be broadly defined as public opinion. Pitt-Rivers emphasizes, therefore, that honor felt becomes honor claimed, and honor claimed becomes honor paid (Pitt-Rivers 1977:2). Thus, personal expectation is not enough: to be guaranteed, honor requires a social status validation from a collectivity (Pitt-Rivers 1977:21). Peristiany holds the same opinion when he highlights that honor is dependent on specific social evaluations (Peristiany 1965:11).

Based on the foregoing rather general observations, researchers have analyzed the various expressions of honor in Mediterranean societies. The focus has been on exploring the singly ascribed and acquired qualities as well as the visible and assessable ones that attribute honor to individuals and groups, since honor in the Mediterranean area is not based exclusively on personal status. The qualities that bestow honor, thus ensuring the collectivity’s recognition, also define reputation and position on the social ladder.

Yet, the most authoritative experts confirm nearly in unison that the above qualities are not the same for all and that a gender divide is crucial: the prerequisite qualities for men are different from those for women. There is a male honor and a female honor, thus there is also a rather marked and strict division of social roles. Male honor is essentially dependent on its visible will and the ability to shield one’s own and one’s family’s reputation from possible attacks from potential rivals (Pitt-Rivers 1977:22). Qualities that have been attested and verified by public opinion, such as nearly heroic courage and valor (Pitt-Rivers 1977:22; Kaser 1992), composure, presence of mind, readiness to fight, feeling of pride (Campbell 1976:269) as well as generosity, hospitality, and even mildness of character and patience, are essential to be acknowledged as a true uomo d’onore.

Female qualities are mainly related to modesty, which most authors believe to be the cornerstone of women’s honor. Consequently, female honor is strictly linked to sexual behavior: premarital virginity and absolute fidelity to one’s spouse are the imperative hallmarks of purity, together with modesty, shyness, self-restraint, and obedience.

According to some authors however, this difference between the two roles does not imply an actual social disparity between genders, since the status of the powerful is counterbalanced by the virtue of the weak (Lisón-Tolosana 1966:108).

Moreover, male and female honor are not two separate, individual phenomena, but must be considered jointly, since honor is also a collective issue. This led Pitt-Rivers to state that between the two genders there is a moral division of labor guaranteeing the honor of the entire family (nuclear or extended) and in some cases of the entire kinship group (Pitt-Rivers 1977:78).

The concept of honor and shame societies is based precisely on the above-mentioned division of roles and corresponding social practices in accordance with gender. This label was created and used to characterize Mediterranean societies’ specifically, and, despite criticisms of an anthropological nature that we shall discuss further on, is still in use to some extent in social science parlance.

One of the most outstanding features of the purported honor and shame societies in the Mediterranean area, in addition to the ones previously mentioned, was their agonistic character by which groups would vie fiercely for honor, thus triggering an unremitting competition for recognition, respect, and ultimately reputation and social status. Yet, in this case as well, we can observe a tendency to substantiate the egalitarian and harmonious nature of honor and shame societies. In fact, the agonism linked to honor was ultimately regarded as a social strategy to remain equal and not as a set of practices aimed at reaffirming the disparity between individuals and groups.

Credit for calling into question the theoretical framework based on the notion of honor and shame societies goes to Michael Herzfeld in particular. He criticizes anthropologists, especially those of Anglo-Saxon origin, for their ethnocentric viewpoint tainted by both heterophilic and heterophobic stereotypes about the concept of honor and honor-related beliefs and actions (Herzfeld 1984:440, 1987a:9).

For these researchers, the discussion of Mediterranean honor ultimately proves to be a fatal trap because they project on to the alien reality which confronts them with their own fear of, and longing for, an archaic world, which constantly appears to them as an ambivalent allegory. Thus, Mediterranean societies are made archaic both artificially and arbitrarily.

The reader gets the impression that these societies are a relic of past epochs, admittedly characterized by violent and bloodthirsty barbarism, along with a primitive purity, and finally by an earthy simplicity of ways of life and social relationships. What emerges, therefore, is that the archaization of Mediterranean societies by Anglo-Saxon anthropologists simultaneously and always implies an exoticization of these cultures (Herzfeld 1980, 1987a:64). One can hardly challenge the fact that the manifest penchant of North American and northern-European researchers for the theme of honor evokes an alien, hence an exotic, image of Mediterranean societies. The entire Mediterranean region is thereby presented as an appendix of the wilderness in both its positive and negative form. Further, the Euro-Mediterranean space is staged as being nearly unrelated to Europe. According to Herzfeld, the most serious consequence of the archaization and exoticization of Mediterranean countries is the artificial separation of Euro-Mediterranean societies from other European cultures, so that Mediterranean Studies ends up regarding the region as an accumulation of autonomous, yet socioculturally homogeneous primitive societies.

To support his thesis, Herzfeld adds that while the national ethnologies of this region do not entirely deny honor and shame, neither do they regard it as a central element in the study of Mediterranean values. This is in pleasant contrast to the reports of travelers and researchers from northern Europe and the United States, because local folklorists strive to resist this explicit or implicit exoticization (Herzfeld 1987a:64). Though recognizing their parochial approach (Herzfeld 1987a:13), Herzfeld is rather lenient with the various versions of Mediterranean folklore studies since we cannot fail to notice that nearly all of them provided welcome material for the construction and development of nationalist, separatist, populist, and localist ideologies precisely via the archaization and exoticization of their own lower strata, particularly the rural ones. In doing so, there was a clear will to create far too idyllic an image of the Mediterranean peasant’s world.

Aside from Herzfeld’s contentions, there are further criticisms regarding the anthropology of honor in Mediterranean societies. In the first place, we need to highlight the implicit communitarian vision by which, notwithstanding the previously mentioned agonism, the single actors have a strong sense of solidarity and reciprocity. Still, the term agone, that is contest, in itself, as used by anthropologists of Mediterranean societies, brings to mind loyal competitions, if not between socially equal persons, at least between people with a similar social status. This construction of the subject-matter downplays both the importance of social disparity and of the conflicts and tensions between individuals and groups, while emphasizing the social harmony of the communities examined. As Jacob Black-Michaud proposed, in several cases the term feuding societies, in which the struggles for recognition, thus honor contentions, are much more violent, would be more suitable (Black-Michaud 1975).

The point that appears to be particularly questionable – and this is true also of Herzfeld’s suggestion to replace the notion of honor with other terms such as hospitality (Herzfeld 1987b) – is the tendency to believe that coercive systems of norms and values mirroring specific forms of morality underpin the idea of honor and its social practices. We feel quite skeptical about this rather idealistic and perhaps somewhat naive vision.

Given these criticisms, should we then believe that everything that has been researched and published by anthropology on the subject of honor and shame societies in the Mediterranean area ought to be regarded as outmoded, unreliable and unrealistic, thus scientifically irrelevant and not fit to be used? This would definitely be too drastic, considering that in recent years other social sciences, such as sociology and social history, have reintroduced the theme of honor and shame societies, drawing on and reinterpreting anthropologists’ highly criticized results and analyses. Nowadays, however, the interest in honor goes beyond the limited space of Mediterranean societies and extends to other social configurations, such as specific societies in the Near and Middle East (Husseini 2009) and the Indian subcontinent, as well as immigration societies in north-central Europe. Obviously, this rediscovery is also strictly linked to the rising number of honor killing cases and of the far less frequent but not less shocking blood revenge in this area of the Old Continent (Wikan 2008).

Most likely Unni Wikan is right when she questions the current validity of the term honor and shame societies. This is due mainly to the ambiguity of the term shame, which may convey both the idea of disgrace as in impudence, indignity, and infamy, and of decency as in modesty, propriety, and purity. It would probably be more suitable to speak simply of honor and dishonor. Under this aspect, we should mention the terminological question, that is, honor’s semantic differences from one society to another in the Mediterranean area. Without going into much detail, there seems to be a far more marked variety of concepts in the Arab and Turkish world (we need only refer to the difference between the notions of namus and sheref) than in Greece, Spain, and Italy, though all these various representations with dissimilar connotations always involve reputation, prestige, esteem, standing, saving face, and good name.

Personally, I believe that we ought to revise those previously mentioned concepts of honor steeped in romanticism and resume a more transactional approach, as suggested by Bailey (Bailey 1971:19). Honor in general, thus also honor in the Mediterranean societies, is not merely a moral code comprising values, norms, representations, and a set of practices, but rather a cultural idiom and a combination of social strategies found in several public arenas. Thus, honor in its various expressions in terms of representations and social practices alike is a phenomenon set up to highlight social differences (class and gender especially), and maintain, increase or restore status and reputation in order to define (better yet, redefine) the social identifications and auto-comprehensions of individuals and groups (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). Therefore, as my experience as expert witness in criminal court cases confirms, an agent acts in accordance with the social logic of honor not so much because he feels duty-bound by a culturally-defined moral obligation, but rather because he fears being sanctioned and stigmatized by his significant others.

With specific reference to the Mediterranean, but also elsewhere, the person who reacts to an alleged or actual offence to his honor (even in a criminally indictable way), does so because he fears the annihilation of his social status and personal reputation, including the good name of his primary group (family and relatives) with the reference community. This loss of status and good repute often implies negative economic consequences, too. Honor and its social practices are not so much a nearly genetically set cultural legacy, as much as a system of concrete strategies intentionally put to use in everyday life. Thus, honor in this specific case stops being a static entity that the actor cannot escape and becomes a pliant and flexible phenomenon. It proves to be a cultural knowledge, and consequently an adequate action know-how. Therefore, honor is a social resource for individuals who will both put it to use to assess their own social situation and activate it in specific constellations in order to achieve what is regarded as an opportune goal. To conclude: in line with Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu we can state that the actors abide by a given rule to the extent that their interest in doing so exceeds their interest in not conforming to said rule (Weber 1956; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1996:147). If, on the one hand, interests and rules are not universal and ought to be regarded, in a sense, as cultural products, on the other hand, actors are not trapped in their social and cultural habitus, which must be regarded as a socially acquired disposition and not as a strictly binding behavior dictated by a coercive morality.

Patronage and Political Practices

In anthropology, the debate concerning forms of patronage cannot be properly conducted without mentioning what was and still is the most renowned, though probably the most criticized, study on the political culture of Mediterranean societies, and Euro-Mediterranean ones in particular (Pizzorno 1976; Silverman 1968; Davis 1970; Schneider and Schneider 1976; Pitkin 1985; Herzfeld 1987a). We allude to the book written by American political scientist Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Banfield 1958). Banfield had carried out field research in the small community of Montegrano in Basilicata (southern Italy) and, by applying a typically anachronistic stance borrowed from North American political studies, believed he observed a lack of civic culture in this town on the margins of Italian society.

His key argument, taken up even recently by two rather ideologically opposed authors Francis Fukuyama (Fukuyama 1995) and Robert Putnam (Putnam et al. 1993), was that there was no awareness of the common good in this southern Italian society, and that in the public sphere its inhabitants were only pursuing the interests of their own family group. Their attitude was summarized as an amoral familism, which highlighted a condition of moral, social, and economic backwardness. Clearly, this vision was so blatantly ethnocentric that we need not comment further. Banfield’s fundamental error lay not so much in this vision distorted by ethnocentrism, as much as in reducing Montegrano into an atomistic society consisting solely of family units with the possible addition of nearest kin members. According to Banfield, beyond this quasi-segmentary sociability there was only a structural desert. On his quest for an unlikely American-style civil society, this author had practically disregarded the social complexity based on highly personalized relationships within the community and beyond the family and closest relatives. Wide of the mark, he had focused exclusively on his search for formal and permanent organizations (such as voluntary associations, cooperatives, or trade unions) and had utterly overlooked the less apparent, yet also more informal, changeable, and flexible existence of quasi-groups and networks.

Anthropological researches on Mediterranean societies have tried to remedy this serious theoretical and empirical deficit and have provided ample evidence that the single family units extend their social relationships beyond the limited range of their own members, including closest relatives and in-laws. Therefore, Mediterranean societies cannot be likened to fictitious and improbable atomistic societies (Galt 1973; Gilmore 1975).

The family’s role is definitely central, yet its interests, as Italian anthropologist Carlo Tullio-Altan highlighted, are managed by its own members through skillful strategies that may often be in contrast with the proper administration of the state or to the detriment of the common good (Tullio-Altan 1986). But, in order to effectively guarantee advantages for the family, the single members need to extend their network of social relationships by joining extrafamilial coalitions of various types and dimensions. By means of the asymmetrical and often vertical relationships of symbolic kinship, such as godparenthood for example, and the rather symmetrical and horizontal ones of friendship, the anthropologists of Mediterranean societies (Pitt-Rivers 1977:54; Gilmore 1980; Piselli 1981) were able to observe two principal forms of extending cooperation relationships beyond the inner circle of parents, relatives, and in-laws. Neighborhood ties, instead, would seem to be less important and at times rather trouble-ridden (Davis 1973:68; Du Boulay 1979).

Probably though, with his study Friends of Friends (1974), which drew inspiration from the concept of network developed by the Manchester School, Jeremy Boissevain revealed the significance of extrafamilial personalized coalitions in Mediterranean societies, thus indirectly confirming the flimsiness of Banfield’s analysis.

Anthropological researches on the crucial role of patronage relationships and coalitions in Mediterranean societies’ political and bureaucratic fabric stem precisely from this debate and the subsequent study of personalized and barely formalized forms of social organization. Relationships between patrons and clients on which all these networks are based were defined as personalized, asymmetrical, and vertical dyadic links rooted in the reciprocal exchange of qualitatively unbalanced favors (Foster 1963; Mühlmann and Llaryora 1968). The asymmetry was determined by the fact that the client was more dependent on the patron than vice versa, while the verticality was due to the palpable social gap between patron and client – the latter belonged to a lower social class. Therefore, the relationship between patron and client was characterized by a clear social disparity between the two contracting parties.

With good reason, anthropologists of Mediterranean societies were revealing that, apart from a few exceptions (White 1980), patronage coalitions permeated the political systems of the societies studied (Signorelli 1983). Consequently, personalized patron–client relationships were typical between political entrepreneurs and electors, wherein the latter would provide their vote in exchange for a previous or subsequent counter-favor from the former to their own exclusive advantage. The term political entrepreneurs included both aspirants to a political position and brokers, that is, middlemen who mobilized the single client for the candidates using door-to-door strategies. In Sicily, for example, prominent members of Mafia networks would take on the role of broker.

Yet, the situation described by most anthropologists was typical of the so-called clientele system of the notables. An outmoded and declining form of patronage, this was a local elite that would disappear from the political scene during the 1960–1970 decade. In place of the old notables, full-time professional politicians emerged, especially in Euro-Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, and Greece) and what political scientists call party clientelism or mass clientelism set in (Weingrod 1968; Belloni et al. 1979; D’Amico 1993). This brought about a substantial change in patronage policies, which, moreover, has seldom been studied by the anthropologists of Mediterranean societies. The professional politician in his role of party official, or his broker, no longer aimed at obtaining the single client’s vote, but rather at controlling entire blocks of votes (Blok 1974:222). From then on, the role played by the old notables was taken on by the managers of so-called secondary associations, such as trade unions, cooperatives, youth, professional and sports associations. The management can include both professional politicians who control these electoral clusters directly as well as socially influential persons who, though not directly involved in politics, can tender the electoral potential at their disposal. Contrary to the old clientele system of the notables, the current forms of patronage policies are based mainly on the systematic capture and control of votes obtained by exploiting civil society institutions. However, the personalization of social relationships is also essential in this case.

The main, as well as the most pertinent, criticism of anthropological researches on patronage in